Mariah Carey’s New Video For ‘I Don’t’ Makes Us Miss Mariah From The Nineties

“I Don’t” featuring YG is the worst Mariah Carey production to date, and the music video only makes things worse.

Mariah Carey’s career hasn’t been in worse shape since she had that emotional breakdown. She entered the reality show game a decade late with Mariah’s World, a show lambasted as being a dull, pleasureless spectacle on E!. She had a very public breakup with her billionaire ex-fiancé James Packer. She had that epic NYE performance fail. And the sad state of her once legendary voice becomes more and more apparent with each recording she releases.

That’s hard for a long time fan like me. I remember when “Fantasy”, “Honey”, and “Always Be My Baby” debuted. When I hear Carey’s name, I still want to hear that infections, powerful, and range-defying voice soar like it used to. I want the Mariah Carey that slayed “My All”, establishing this legendary career and more than earning her diva status.

But her new song “I Don’t” sadly falls straight in line with her recent string of flops. Even though it is produced by her longtime collaborators Jermaine Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox, the track sounds like the GarageBand musings of a teenager.

Even worse is the lyrical content. Somehow in her verging on 30-year career, Carey has managed to only get more basic on her songs. How this 40-something diva is still putting out breakup anthems with lyrics like “Told you I’m finished, gassed up the whip and… Rear view, bye” is beyond me.

Central to the whole song is a sample of Donnell Jones’s hit “Where I Want To Be” (1999) which anchors the chorus and ends up being the most redeeming portion of the song.

‘Cause when you love someone
You just don’t treat them bad
You messed up all we had
Prolly think I’m coming back
But I don’t, I don’t

I like that she takes a defiant stand by declaring “I don’t” to her ex, but the sad twist is the Donnell Jones sample sounds better than Mariah’s singing. It’s horrifying to hear someone that was once on par with Whitney Houston on “When You Believe” struggle just to get on top of the notes Donnell Jones sang with ease.

But the worst of it all has the be the accompanying video. Wrapped in a deconstructed wedding dress and what appears to be a sequence of latex one-pieces, Carey does her best to emote young and sexy, but her robotic movements on top of luxury cars look sad, especially as she screeches about being heartbroken. The whole affair is clearly meant to be a shot at her ex, but it comes off looking more like an SNL parody. Vanessa Bayer was made for emulating things like this, and I would not be shocked in the least if this actually showed up on air this Saturday night.

I’m all for a good breakup anthem, but real friends don’t let friends embarrass themselves like this.